Tiny jets, the size of rice, cross-stitch the blue skies over the streets of Gaza. Surveillance blimps hover like the Super Bowl. The people below, one and a half million of them, huddle in close homes without electricity or water. Witnesses cringe as noises from the jets paint the town.

Dr. Nicolas Doussis-Rassias and many other volunteer doctors have been waiting in Rafah, Egypt for days. Nicolas and the other physicians came to Rafah to go through the border into Gaza to help the 3000 people wounded by Israeli bombs and heavy weapons.

Rafah is a heavily armed Egyptian border crossing into Gaza, a four hour drive away from Cairo. Sonic booms of high flying jets cut through the stark blue sky. Military drones hover over the border as the air smells of burning.

“Three thousand victims of bombs and gunfire would overwhelm the medical system of New York city,” Nicolas said. “Gaza now has no functioning medical system at all. Most of it has no electricity nor running water. These people are in crisis - they need medical help, so we are here to help them.”

As I write, we can hear the dull thud of explosions in the distance. Israeli airstrikes continue to blast targets in southern Gaza. Merciless bombing of the small Gaza Strip continues into a third week. I heard some people here in Egypt wonder if the Israeli Air Force must be running out of places and people to target. But perhaps the surveillance drones we heard and saw flying over the Rafah border crossing today hunted down more spots on which bombers could fix their cross-hairs. Perhaps they spotted underground tunnels. The Israeli government has, reportedly, already destroyed 80% of the tunnels that connect Gaza with the outside world. It’s common knowledge that a vast network of tunnels, some say as many as 1700, were constructed, many from outside Gaza’s territorial borders, leading into the Territory. Israel claims the tunnels are legitimate targets because the Hamas government can use them to import weapons. But the buildup of the tunnel industry was fueled by desperation for needed goods, within Gaza, a desperation caused by Israel’s decision, over the past 16 months, to tighten the thumbscrews of its blockade on Gaza. If the blockade continues, and if the tunnels are completely destroyed, besieged Gazans will be cut off from secure supplies of food, medicine and fuel, yet another terrifying prospect for people who are desperate to protect their children from any greater harm.

Kansan Cathy Smith, the mother of Tomas Young, a soldier who received a gunshot wound to his cervical spine in Iraq and is now a paraplegic said, “My son and I were in Grant Park celebrating with thousands of others here in Chicago on election night. But then I remembered how I felt in 2006 when we put in a new Congress that was supposed to stop the war…that can’t be allowed to happen again.”

I recently witnessed the arrest of a young black male by the Chicago Police Department for doing nothing more than sitting on a bike on the sidewalk. As a member of Northside Action for Justice’s CopWatch program, I have often seen and grown to expect such unwarranted arrests in our neighborhood of Uptown, but this incident struck me as particularly aggressive, uncalled for, and just plain stupid.

Affectionate greetings to you all. I arrived four days ago from the Middle East and find myself caught as it were between two worlds. I feel like I left one family there in order to return to family here. Despite the starkly different realities, both places seem equally familiar. In ways hard to describe, life there seems easier.

I learned that among the things he was forced to leave behind was a large feather pillow his mother had made about seventy years ago. She had gathered the feathers herself. Also left behind were some embroidery pieces she had made as well as a couple of books and other items. When his wife died of cancer over 28 years ago, this gentle man had raised his three children alone. I met his only daughter recently in Syria. She and her husband are among the refugee population there longing to join family in a safe place where they can work and raise their two small daughters. I thought of an embroidered pillow case cover my mother gave me some years back. It is something I cherish imagining how she had laid her head on it as a child. Maybe, I told him, I could retrieve some of the things left behind with a neighbor.

I wasn’t prepared for the extent of impoverishment I would see in Syria. Arriving by bus just a few hours after a suicide car bomb took the lives of at least 17 civilians in Damascus, I learned about the attack from the taxi driver who took me from the bus stop to the neighborhood where I was to meet my translator. Although I understood the Arabic word for “explosion,” it was only later that I would get more details.

Maybe if each of us knew just one Iraqi youth, we would think twice before allowing drone planes to fly bombing missions over the child’s home for the purpose of “liberation” or “fighting terrorism.” Maybe

if each of us knew just one mother from Afghanistan, we would actually move to stop our government from continuing its criminal policies that lead to so much “collateral damage.” Maybe each of our actions combined would form the basis for an actual collective movement.